That was great. I loved how that one guy argued that rich (white) kids should be allowed to play GTA, but not poor (black) children. Because everyone knows that if you're poor, you're a bad person who won't hesitate to steal cars of deal crack given the opportunity.

That was great. I loved how that one guy argued that rich (white) kids should be allowed to play GTA, but not poor (black) children. Because everyone knows that if you're poor, you're a bad person who won't hesitate to steal cars of deal crack given the opportunity.

That sounds awesome...Someone should seriously make a game out of that!

I really thought it was funny how out of touch they were on the matter before them. They don't see anything but GTA as being representative all video games have to offer. Heaven forbid parents take responsibility for what they allow their children to play.

Anyway, I don't think there is much to worry about. Fictional novels and short stories, movies, and comic books have all suffered the same criticism and come out fine on the end. I wonder how many Congressmen read fiction novels without even knowing what Thomas Jefferson thought of the idea of fiction? I wonder if Roger Ebert knows how novelists treated his beloved films when they first appeared?

Seriously Congress dudes and dudettes, read your pop art history before you try to do something about a newer form of pop art.

I saw this back when it initially aired, or at least the first rerun. This is hilarious, and shows how sadly out of touch the politicians are with statements such as the one about the rich/poor kids. The enviroment of the poor kids he specified would do more harm than a single video game would, anyway.

Cowboy: Yeah, they just flat out enact it, as last I checked some areas of Canada /do/ require one's age to be checked before purchase. But unlike in the USA, I'm pretty sure that movies are no exception in such areas, while here apparantly R rated movies don't need laws to keep from being sold/rented to minors while games do.

Yeah that is true. Two instances come to mind on both those counts (movies and games). One was a friend of mine was going to get GTA3 for PC when it came out and he forgot to lie (heh) and they almost didn't sell it to him. Long story short they ended up contacting his dad to get permission. Something similar like that hapepened to me when I tried to rent a game once.

And when it come to movies I remember buying some R rated movie on a trip to DC and I asked if I could get them. The person looked and me strangly and said 'well yeah of corse. They're suposed to be sold to customers.' or something alog those lines. I know that here I used to get carded a lot for trying to get movies and games rated R or M.

Our government at least know what those letters mean. The fact that Congress has to learn and educate themselves on something that was implamented way back when game were gaining popularity (and games like MK came onto the scene) is funny really. It's over a decade old and they still haven't got it. It really is pretty straight forward, even if the discription of why it's rated M is vague it still clearly states 17+. So we must wonder why someone at the age of say 12 or 13 has a game with this rating in the first place nevermind whats in the game.

Logged

It's really very complicated, you wouldn't understand. You aren't even twelve are you!?

Some of the legislation that's been pissing me off the most - maybe the only game legislation that does at that - is the attempts to classify violent video games as 'obscene', ala porn. Hiding cases of GTA is a bit too much for trying to keep minors from playing it, and the concept of making it flat out /illegal/ for them to play it, regardless of what the parents decide, angers me out of principal. Ofcourse, it's not like playing these games can't be easily hidden, but still.

The simple 'card minors for selling violent games' bit just annoys me when they don't do the same to movies and whatnot, though I don't exactly want it to happen to them either. :P